There's a few things that I did to adapt the recipe to make it gluten free, and a bit more to my liking. I replaced the cookie crust with a gluten free graham cracker crust. If you can find it, I recommend using Schar gluten free graham style crackers. They have a great texture and taste. Another great thing is that it is also an egg and dairy free graham cracker (although this recipe is not dairy free).

Since this is a bit of a guilty pleasure dessert, I like to use a fat free condensed milk rather than normal condensed milk to make me feel slightly less guilty. I also use cupcake wrappers and tins to package the dessert. It makes single servings much easier to provide, and looks really great served on a platter.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a good weekend so far! If you're a tv nerd like I am, you're impatiently waiting for the Doctor Who Series 7 finale, here's a healthy and tasty snack to hold you over! I like to make this with my immersion blender, it makes clean up time go by much faster, and there's less waste than using a full blender. You can add banana to this if you wish, but I omit it because I hate the texture of raw banana.

Enjoy!

Servings: 1 tall glass

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

6 oz plain yogurt

1 cup orange juice

1 mango, skinned and cubed

2 tbsp lime juice

Steps

Combine all ingredients in a tall cup, and blend with an immersion blender until smooth. If you don't have an immersion blender, use a standing blender.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Did you ever ask yourself "I wonder who invented (fill in the blank)??" My kids ask me this question almost daily. My 10 year old daughter asked yesterday "I wonder who invented grass?" Referring to the kind of grass that we cut with a lawn mower!

With today's technology we can get get the answers to these questions almost instantly.
I was researching national health awareness days for a project at work and came across National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! How cool is that- a day to celebrate the chocolate chip cookie. Now, I am all about chocolate chip cookies of all varieties. I have been baking them since I was a kid.
Like all great recipes the chocolate chip cookie was an accident.

Ruth Wakefield invented the chocolate chip cookie in 1930. Ruth was a 1924 graduate of the Framingham State Normal School Department of Household Arts. She lectured on food and worked as a dietician. Ruth and her husband Kenneth ran a bed & breakfast near Whitman, Massachusetts. The name of the establishment was none other than the "Toll House Inn." Ruth was very well know for her desserts and frequently made her guests a butter drop cookie.

One day Ruth decided she wanted to make a chocolate butter drop cookie but did not have the proper chocolate on hand. Ruth did however have a bar of Nestle's chocolate given to her by Andrew Nestle himself. Ruth decided to cut up the bar into tiny pieces hoping that the chocolate would melt and create an all chocolate cookie. Needless to say, this did not happen but the chocolate bits softened up and created a whole new delicious variety of cookie that was a huge success.
Ruth made a deal with Nestle that they could put the recipe on the back of their package as long as they supplied her with free chocolate to make her guests cookies. In 1939 Nestle's created the chocolate morsels that we know today!

This is my first time participating in #WeekdaySupper! The concept behind it is filled with the spirit of Sunday Supper, but packaged into making recipes during the week. Weekday suppers are sometimes hard to pull off. The only person I'm responsible for is myself, and between a full time job, grad school, blogging, and maintaining a social life, weekday evenings are prime real estate. I can't even begin to imagine throwing kids into the equation at this point in life while trying to still do everything I'm doing now.

This all captures why I appreciate the #WeekdaySupper events and am happy to be contributing to it! I made this recipe with ingredients I had in my pantry, within the hour and a half I had last night in between getting home from work and the beginning of class. This is a fairly flexible recipe, as you can cook this on the stove top if you don't have a gas grill readily available.

This post is a part of this week's #WeekdaySupper! Be sure to check the rest of this week's supper recipes.

In a bowl, combine the soy sauce, ginger, lemon, pepper, and honey. Grease and preheat the grill over medium heat. Brush the sauce on one side of the chops, and place the sauced side down on the grill. Brush the bare tops of the chops with more sauce. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Flip the chops and baste with more sauce. Cover and cook for another 5 minutes, then remove from heat and turn off the grill.

For the slaw, mix together all of the ingredients and cover. Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Serve the chops with slaw and either your favorite vegetable or some white or brown rice.

Friday, May 10, 2013

This past week I posted a recipe for tequila lime chicken.
In the post last weekend, I referenced how tequila is one of the few
consistently gluten free alcohols. The amount of questions I received regarding
gluten in alcohol led me to writing this post as part of my Celiac Awareness
posts. This post isn’t meant as a way of answering the gluten content in every
single alcohol, but I hope it helps provide some information as to why some
alcohol has gluten, and how I pick and choose my alcohols.

How does gluten get
into alcohol?

It’s a very odd thing to think that gluten can be in
alcohol. But once you gain an understanding of how alcohol is made, it can help
you in choosing which alcohols you can consume safely. (Note that when I
mention alcohol, I’m referring to alcoholic beverages, not alcohols such as
rubbing alcohol.) There are two methods of producing alcohol: fermentation and
distillation. Fermentation is a process of producing a mix of carbohydrates and
yeast. The yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and other by-products. If a
beverage is distilled, then the ethanol in the fermented mix is distilled out
of the mix, producing a spirit that is high in alcohol. Fermented beverages will always contain gluten based on the carbohydrate base of the mix. Distilled beverages may contain gluten based on the carbohydrate base of the mix, depending on processing and what evaporates with the distilled alcohol.

If gluten comes from
the carbohydrate, then which alcohols should I avoid?

There are three main types of alcohol: beer, wine, and
spirits. An understanding each type makes it easier to expect which alcohols
may contain gluten.

Beer is produced by fermenting a grain mash (this grain is
the source of the carbohydrates). The most common grains used in beer are
barley, rye, and wheat. Beers based on these grains will contain gluten and
should be avoided. Ciders and sorghum, rice, or millet beers are normally
gluten-free and safe to drink. I find beer to be one of the easiest to know
whether to avoid or not, since the base grain is normally always identified.

Wine or mead is produced by fermenting fruit, using the
sugars in the fruits as the carbohydrates. I normally always trust wine to be
gluten free due to the lack of grain in the carbohydrate base.

Distilled beverages are the trickiest to know if they are
gluten free or not. I find these normally don’t advertise what the base
carbohydrate is, so this is where learning what each spirit is comes to be
helpful. What I like to do is learn what each spirit is normally made of, and
choose my spirits based on these. Also, always avoid the cheap stuff. Not only do they normally taste bad, but there's a potential for the manufacturer to use wheat or barley to cheapen the carb mix. Below are a few common spirits listed, and
what they’re normally made from.

Spirit

Carbohydrate

Should I avoid this?

scotch

barley

Yes

vodka

Rye, corn, wheat, potato

Know your brands

bourbon

corn

Know your brands

Brandy or cognac

grapes

Normally Gluten Free

Rum

sugarcane

Safe!

Tequila

agave

Safe!

You can see that alcohols based on sugars or fruits are
normally safe to consume (I still recommend always checking the brand on the
internet.) Bourbons can be tricky because additional grains may be used with the corn, which could lead to some gluten being introduced into the distilled alcohol. I personally don't react to Maker's Mark, but that doesn't mean it is universally okay for everyone. This reminds me of the CSA's three step self management guide (

http://www.csaceliacs.info/self_management.jsp). In step two of the process, once you've gotten your gluten under control, you can expand your diet by researching, learning, and experimenting with foods. Distilled alcohols are under their expansion step, and I believe bourbon falls under this category.

Vodka is the trickiest of them all. As you can see, a wide
variety of starches can be used to make vodka. The ones that are normally safe
are corn or potato vodka, but I 100% recommend checking the brand of a vodka
before consuming it. If there’s no information available about whether it’s
gluten free or not, avoid it. I personally just avoid vodkas all together.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! I hope that you're all having a safe and enjoyable weekend with friends and family. This week, the Sunday Supper group is putting forth some of our favorite Mexican inspired recipes.

I personally love margaritas, especially since they're a gluten free cocktail. Tequila is an alcohol distilled from agave, a naturally gluten free plant. Liquors are something I was weary of gluten when I began this journey a couple years ago. How do you know a liquor is gluten free or not? It's become increasingly easy to find out which brands are, but a good rule of thumb is to research what the alcohol is commonly distilled from.

My tequila lime recipe is a simple one to do, you pretty much make a margarita and add some additional spices to it! I like to freshly grind my peppercorns and my cilantro to bring out their oils, I recommend it if you have a mortar and pestle! If not, it's perfectly fine to use ground pepper and chopped cilantro for the marinade.

Check out my recipe at the bottom, and be sure to check everyone's Cinco de Mayo recipes! Join the #SundaySupper conversation on Twitter on Sunday, May 5th to celebrate Cinco de Mayo! We’ll tweet throughout the day and share recipes from all over the world. Our weekly chat starts at 7:00 pm EST. Follow the #SundaySupper hashtag, and remember to include it in your tweets to join in the chat. Check out our #SundaySupper Pinterest board for more delicious recipes and food photos.

In a large bowl, combine everything but the chicken. Stir until well combined, and then add the chicken. Cover and refrigerate for 5 hours.

At the end of the five hours, remove the chicken from the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 450F, and a large skillet pan over medium heat. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Add a tablespoon of olive oil to the pan, and add the chicken. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side. Transfer the chicken to the baking pan, and place in the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the chicken is 165F.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Hi everyone, this month is Celiac Awareness Month. This is going to be a short post, but I wanted to share some sites to kick of this month. I'm also planning on sharing a series of posts on the gluten free lifestyle, including some information on Celiac and gluten senstivity, what to look for if you may have Celiac, and ways of adjusting your lifestyle to be gluten free. Post any comments on topics you'd be interested in seeing this month!